From the now-infamous cow-nipple dress to used wigs, see creations made of unusual fabrics

Not since Rudi Gernreich's monokini have exposed nipples caused such a fashion scandal. At the recent London Fashion Week, 32-year-old British designer Rachel Freire showed a dress made of 3,000 cow and yak nipples—part of her spring-summer 2012 "Nippleocalypse" collection—and met with harsh criticism. "It seems to me absolutely grotesque," Labour MP Kerry McCarthy said. "I think most people will find it sickening and repulsive." But Freire defended her provocative piece, saying, "I create fashion using material that would otherwise end up on the scrap heap. What I am doing is recycling. The people criticizing are clearly clueless about the amount of leather wasted on a daily basis."

Rachel Freire’s Controversial Material

Rachel Freire’s Controversial Material

Table dress by Hussein Chalayan

Throughout his career, Hussein Chalayan has experimented with such innovative materials as fiberglass and LEDs. (He also famously sculpted the egg Lady Gaga arrived in at the Grammy Awards.) But of all his avant-garde creations, it was the final piece in his fall-winter 2000 collection that is, arguably, his most memorable. At the end of Chayalan's runway show that year, model Natalia Semanova stepped into the center of a circular wooden table that had been part of the set—and pulled it up to her waist. "The number of times I've seen that bloody table skirt," Chayalan said to The Independent on the eve of a 2009 retrospective at London's Design Museum. "I mean, I love that piece, but it's only the tiniest part of what we've done."